Saturday, January 19, 2008

Back to the fish theme. More from the National Arboretum, which has an impressive collection. Don't go looking for them this month however, they are pretty much dormant and invisible during these cold winter months.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

My first sculpture in metal, at last. I had this bird in my head for many years before I finally surrendered to the inevitable and started working in clay. I actually did the lion's share of the work on this piece over a year ago but didn't wrap it up and send it (in a friend's car) to the foundry in Colorado until summer. They are a busy place and so it took several months to complete the work, with me having no real input since I couldn't go check the work, until it was almost complete. The foundry sent me jpegs of the piece in raw metal and I could see some areas which needed some adjustment (mold making can distort the clay and then you have the distortion in the mold, which needs to be corrected for each wax pour but which is better corrected in wax than later in metal). Anyway they then proceeded with the patina finish, doing a cupric blue green with carbon in the recesses as I requested, and voila, it is suddenly done and in my house. The edition size is 14.